The Analytical Gaze vs The Aesthetic Gaze: How Narrative Styles Manifest Character Identity
Once I saw a female writer ask: 'Sometimes when I write how a character perceives a landscape in order to echo the central narrative and establish the atmosphere. Or I might use Character A's eyes to render Character B's appearance and clothing. But when the writing gets too delicate, I start to doubt myself, would a tough, rugged man really pay attention to the color of the sky, falling leaves, or someone else's shoes? Would that be out of character?'
One reply suggested: 'I think the key is to analyze the character’s personality. Those detectives or agents actually fit into this scope, since paying attention to these things is literally their job.'
This exchange brings to mind the contrast between Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson's observations in the original Canon. Perhaps we can understand this as the difference between a rational, information-extracting gaze and an aesthetic gaze.
For instance, here is how the two of them observe the exact same woman:
Watson:
Holmes:
While Watson's observation leans toward a general impression, Holmes focuses strictly on details. Interestingly, literary critics often categorize Watson's perspective as more 'feminine' and Holmes's as more 'masculine'. Holmes's gaze de-aestheticizes and instrumentalizes the subject, turning them into a practical vessel of information, which is a style considered highly aligned with the 'scientific' and 'rational' male subject. Conversely, Watson's observation is rich in aesthetic detail, such as color, texture, and ornamentation. This is interpreted as an appreciative, admiring look, which is traditionally coded as a more feminine way of observing. During the Victorian era, women were believed to excel at sensing atmosphere and general impressions, possessing a sharper intuition for emotional cues and physical beauty. Men, meanwhile, were thought to excel at cold analysis and logical deduction, focusing strictly on concrete sensory data. This contrast illustrates how Victorian society constructed gender roles by aligning cognitive styles with gender. Of course, this Victorian gender stereotypes are highly questionable in its own right. Gender, as Butler argues, is a repetitive performance rather than an innate biological truth. In this sense, Holmes's cold, logical deduction is a performative iteration of the 'rational male', whereas Watson's highly emotive and aestheticized portrayals perform a softer, more expressive form of masculinity, effectively subverting the rigid, pre-established gender binaries of the Victorian era. Furthermore, within the framework of gaze theory, while classical feminist theory (such as Laura Mulvey's) associates the active gaze with male dominance over a passive female subject, Holmes's observation represents a different, yet equally potent, manifestation of patriarchal power. In Mulvey's framework, the active male gaze typically asserts dominance through erotic objectification. Holmes, however, replaces sexual desire with epistemic mastery. By de-aestheticizing the subject and treating both men and women as texts to be decoded, he rejects visual pleasure in favor of absolute cognitive control. His clinical, cold-blooded dissection remains a thoroughly masculine performance of authority, positioning him as an all-knowing subject who renders everyone else passive objects of inquiry. But Watson's aesthetic appreciation of both men and women complicates this dynamic. His gaze is not one of possession or cold dissection, but of emotional resonance and sensory receptivity, existing outside the dominant, patriarchal mode of observation.
The difference in how the two men observe other males is equally telling:
Holmes:
Watson:
Holmes employs an even more functional language here than he does when observing women. Everything is decoded as behavioral signals that reveal the man’s moral fiber and capability. In other words, when Holmes looks at a man, he is decoding an adversary.
Watson, on the other hand, possesses a delicate appreciation for male beauty. Notably, he adds the phrase 'for women' as a narrative escape hatch, projecting his own aesthetic appreciation onto an imagined female observer to distance himself from the gaze. When the man is disfigured, Watson is so deeply moved that he is on the verge of tears, forced to actively summon a moral judgment just to suppress his emotional reaction.
Not to mention, when confronted with someone as masterful and commanding as Holmes himself, Holmes's competitive drive is triggered, whereas Watson reacts with infatuation, admiration, and even thrill.
That is to say, if you want a character’s writing style to feel more traditionally 'masculine', their portrayal of surroundings and physical appearance should serve a clear, immediate purpose. There should be no wasted words or fluff, and nothing should be written solely to establish an atmosphere or highlight aesthetic beauty.
It is not that a rugged male character cannot notice their environment, clothes, or physical appearance. Rather, it is a matter of why they notice them, and what they choose to do with that information afterward. Ways of observing are always organic extensions of who observers are. What they notice, and what they do with that information, is simply the natural manifestation of their pre-established character and identity.
'a character perceives a landscape in order to echo the central narrative and establish the atmosphere' immediately brings to mind Watson wandering out into the rainy night for absolutely no reason, letting his mind run wild with deep, dark fantasies:
While Holmes's most exquisite portrayal of the landscape comes from the years after his retirement:
It is glaringly obvious that Watson's sentences are longer, layered with overlapping imagery. They lack a defined purpose yet leave him deeply moved, carrying a literary sentimentality and a sense of the sublime felt when being swallowed by one's environment, much like the continuous, lingering rhythm of rain itself, perfectly fitting his water-element temperament (in terms of Tarot). Holmes, on the other hand, even when attempting to write in Watson's 'meretricious' style, remains far more concise. His sentences are cut much cleaner, and his narrative tempo carries a sense of suppressed restraint, where the environment is nothing more than a backdrop to his intense contemplation while trapped by a problem.
If anything, the way films, televisions, animes, video games, and fanarts constantly adapt Watson into a rugged, hyper-masculine figure and Holmes into a delicate, effeminate one is the ultimate, thorough OOC. It stands in stark contradiction to both their actual personalities, dispositions, temperaments, and cognitive styles.